Monday, December 29, 2014

Auad Publishing, which produced books about noted illustrators Robert Fawcett and Al Dorne, has done it again with an important new book about illustrator Al Parker (1906-1985). The 9' x 12" book contains 208 color pages with a rich cross section of Parker's work, along with family photos, reference materials and supporting essays. The text
was written primarily by Stephanie Plunkett, Deputy Director and Chief
Curator of the Norman Rockwell Museum but I was pleased to contribute as
a co-author, along with Leif Peng.

Parker was famous for his diverse visual solutions. While other illustrators worked hard to create a single recognizable brand, Parker's hallmark was ceaseless experimentation. I
can't think of another illustrator who could pick up and put
down artistic styles with such ease:

Here's a sneak preview of the book: My essay says that Parker was the illustrator for the "interregnum"-- the power vacuum when the old gods of illustration (Norman Rockwell, Leyendecker, N.C. Wyeth, etc. ) were departing but the new gods (Pushpin Studios, Robert Weaver, Bernie Fuchs,
Bob Peak, etc.) had not yet arrived. Everything was up for grabs; the styles of illustration which dominated the first half of the 20th century were becoming obsolete, but the new styles had not yet found their footing.

In that window of time, Parker became the leading illustrator who explored dozens of new paths and planted dozens of new seeds. He never stayed in one place long enough to harvest those seeds himself, but they made profitable careers for a number of illustrators who followed in Parker's footsteps.

Good friends: Al Parker surrounded by Bernie Fuchs and Bob Peak

Despite his diverse approaches to picture making, young art students and beginning illustrators had no trouble spotting Parker's work, and would rush to the magazine stands each month to see what Parker was up to. As illustrator / comic artist Leonard Starr reported, "Parker was the man, and all the guys knew it."

A book like this about Parker is long overdue, and I recommend it strongly to fans of illustration.

P.S.-- For those of you living in the Los Angeles area, the Nucleus Gallery is having an exhibition of original Al Parker work. The show will only remain up for another week, and it provides a rare opportunity to see his great talents in the flesh.

Monday, December 22, 2014

I like this sketch by illustrator and character designer Peter de Seve.

While lesser artists strive to get symmetrical features correct, you can tell de Seve views "symmetry" as the waste of an opportunity to squeeze more character into a drawing.

For example, there is nothing uniform about these two wings:

Or the two sides of this hat:

Or these two feet:

Note how one foot is large and defined while the other is small and feeble and dribbles away, just ike the man's life.

And certainly there's no symmetry in those marvelous teeth:

Essentially de Seve has drawn each side anew; there are no mirror images here. That means twice the drawing work, but also twice the opportunity.

Or, note the tail on the creature. Where de Seve doesn't require a tail, he doesn't even bother to complete the outline, but where he really wants one (that curl at the end) he comes back to emphasize it with some of the thickest, darkest marks in the entire drawing.

As another example of good drawing priorities, look at how the fingers below are just a clenched jumble of lines (how many fingers can you count?) yet the knife which commands our attention contains descriptive details such as a that blood groove or the shading along the underside.

De Seve doesn't waste these sketches; there's a lot of thinking going on here about what the picture really requires and what it can do without. And once he forms conclusions, de Seve is one artist with the technical ability to implement them.

Tuesday, December 16, 2014

It's possible that Jack Davis turned down an assignment once, but I never met an eyewitness who saw it happen. During his prolific career, Davis probably accounted for 47% of all the spot illustrations in America. Not all of those illustrations were done with care, and that helped shape the public's impression of his stature.

But now that Davis has announced his retirement at age 90, it's a good moment to focus on his genuine strengths by looking at some of his originals close up.

Davis did excellent fine line work. He didn't fall into the common trap of letting excessive lines turn his subjects rigid and heavy. Despite all that cross hatching, his pictures remained flexible and sprightly:

Illustration from Humbug

Even in his fine line work, Davis maintained enough variety in his line to preserve priorities (for example, the banker's chin and belly).

A master of the pen, he was also a fearless inker with a brush. Look at the way Davis transforms a man into a splatter beneath that sledge hammer. That effect could never have been achieved with his fine line cross hatching style:

From MAD no. 5

Davis could also simplify his style effectively with markers or washes:

Note the simplicity of the shading on the father's face

At age 26, Davis began working at EC comics. From the beginning, his draftsmanship enabled him to squeeze complex scenes into small panels that were already crowded with text:

Even at that early stage, Davis was able to combine thin line and thick brush stroke to bring drama to his pictures in a way that only Neal Adams and perhaps a few others have been able to match.

Finally, Davis had a wonderful sensitivity for color. You didn't always see it in his numerous low budget spot illustrations, but when Davis got serious, there were few better.

Jack Davis has been a brilliant artist and an important voice in American popular culture for decades. As he steps down at age 90, he has a great deal to be proud of.

Thursday, December 11, 2014

In the 1960s, illustrators suddenly became much better at painting action. Contrast this illustration of a tennis player from 1956...

...with this illustration of a tennis player from 1961:

Bernie Fuchs for Sports Illustrated

It's hard to believe two such different approaches were popular just a few years apart. They seem to come from different worlds.

Prior to the 1960s, illustrators often tried to capture action the way a camera did, simply freezing the scene:

Occasionally illustrators might try to get adventuresome with a hotter color or a rougher line, but the results remained pretty tame:

Then at the beginning of the 1960s a radical young group of illustrators came blazing in with new approaches to conveying action:

Fuchs 1961

Detail

Bob Peak 1964

Fuchs 1964

Handville

These artists found new ways to capture speed by combining fresh ingredients: the action painting and abstract expressionism that were revolutionizing the fine arts world; blurred and multiple images learned from movies rather than still cameras; an increased culture of speed from the new space age; new liberties emerging with the great thaw of the 60s. Illustrators abandoned more static, realistic painting for impressionistic sensations of speed. (As an analogy, recall how the great English painter J.M.W. Turner uprooted traditional realistic English landscapes with his own revolutionary expressionist painting, Rain, Steam and Speed.)

These 1960s innovations were so successful they were quickly adopted as artistic conventions by the profession. The slashing lines and rapid brush strokes that at first seemed so exciting and new became standard tools for illustrators-- so much that later generations sometimes forgot whose shoulders they were standing on. More recent illustrators, particularly those invested in textual or conceptual innovations rather than visual innovations, tend to be more dismissive of this period.

This comes to mind today because in a recent interview a prominent illustrator recalled living in Westport Connecticut among the artists responsible for those 60s innovations:

Westport was ‘the place’, butit became not ‘the place’.... illustration
started moving in a very, very different direction. Pretty soon the
Westport illustrators looked really old fashioned....[T]here was this big tension between
the New York City artists that were trying to be really original and
really innovative, and the Westport people that were staying in
traditions

I hear this version of illustration history mostly from students or friends of another radical illustrator of the day, Robert Weaver, who seemed to be in a pitched battle with the Westport illustrators when he wasn't in a pitched battle with himself. For me, the notion that "New York City artists" were more "original" or "innovative" falls flat when we compare the impact of the the two schools of illustration. Few illustrators shaped the personality of their era like those bold illustrators of the 60s. And few generations advanced the ball so far from the work of their predecessors.

But the story doesn't end there. Many Westport artists did not "stay in the traditions" that they founded. Many (such as Fuchs, English and Heindel) continued to experiment visually. For example, decades after his 1960s action paintings above, we see artist Bernie Fuchs employing a very different approach: there are no slashing lines in the following pictures because Fuchs later conveyed speed with a more mature combination of distorted forms, color and perspective.

Morning workout at the track

The fact that a New York constituency shifted its gaze from visual innovation to conceptual innovation doesn't mean that the visual innovations stopped happening, or that the gaze won't shift back as audiences hunger for change.

Sunday, November 30, 2014

Here is what is NOT included in this sketch, that you might have expected to see:

1. Somebody getting punched in the snoot with the traditional impact starburst.

2. The traditional "dizzy" lines radiating from his head, or birdies swimming around.

3. A more cautious and clear drawing of that boxing glove, showing the thumb, or with proper shadows so it is less ambiguous. And while we're at it, a less messy line for that spring.

All of these items would be on the short list for an ordinary cartoonist's picture. But Thompson left them out, including the single most important part of the picture: the person getting punched. He left it to our imagination to decide what the person looked like, and whether he is still up in the air, or his eyes are crossed, or he is upside down with his legs sticking out.

Here is what IS included in this sketch that you might not have expected to see:

1. Loose pages floating down (a marvelous touch)

2. The chair tipped over backward

3. That scribble of a book-- no right angles, parallel pages or details to slow down our quick impression of the book as nothing more than a launching pad.

I'm guessing Thompson didn't consciously think through any of this. I suspect it was all instinctive for him.

When I grumble on this blog that so many of today's preeminent graphic novelists are clueless about the timing, staging, and even the basic vocabulary of visual storytelling, this is what I am talking about. In my view, this wonderful sketch is a thing of beauty compared to most of the work currently winning awards.

Saturday, November 29, 2014

I am pleased that this page from Richard Thompson's sketchbook is included in the new book. Although it isn't a finished drawing, I find it more instructive than many finished drawings.

Thompson's
gift for drawing funny is so bountiful that he draws letters (what you
or I might call "writing") in a funny way too. Here we see him
creating a font for future use:

Anyone involved with typography understands how difficult it is to create a whole alphabet in a new typeface. People work for days or even weeks, with lots of false starts and adjustments, trying to make each letter consistent, and to make sure that each letter shows off the new style to its best advantage.

But here Thompson draws 26 funny letters in a row, like Annie Oakley in a shooting gallery: bangbangbangbangbang.

Thursday, November 27, 2014

I am one of those who ranks the drawn line alongside the discovery of fire and the invention of agriculture on the list of human advances. However, I have learned after years with this blog that a number of you actually believe painting, not drawing, is the true test of an artist. As I understand this rather remarkable claim, an artist must work with the full symphony of elements presented by a painting in order to ascend to the higher tiers.

It is with this audience in mind-- the people who incomprehensibly remain unseduced by a jaunty line-- that I've selected a painting as today's example from The Art of Richard Thompson.

Santa's Sweatshop

Although Richard's medium of choice in more recent years has been pen and ink, The Art of Richard Thompson contains a number of works in full color, ranging from oil paintings and watercolor to pastel and colored pencil.

In my opinion, Richard's full color work contains excellent touches, reminiscent of an artist who has worked full time with color and has developed a painterly way of viewing the world. Another example of the breadth of his talent.